Pages

Sunday, 16 December 2018

A black-cloaked killer leaves a bag behind when disappearing onto a bus. Patrolman Richard Genero sees what happens and goes and opens said bag. The only thing in it is the hand of the title. A murder investigation takes place, using the reports of missing persons as that's about the only line of enquiry available. I suppose that any series is going to have it's highs and lows. It also makes sense to say that the better a series is, the more enjoyable the lows will be, so it stands to reason that any of the 87th Precinct books are going to be worth reading even if they don't always hit the mark. This one didn't really get me totally absorbed. I'm unable to put my finger on why. As much as anything, I suspect that it's because there's no serious development of any of the central characters. The case itself goes like clockwork. Though the leads don't take them far in the early stages, they soon come together to help the detectives crack the case. Notable in this one are some of the set pieces. Genero trying to get a warming Passover wine from a local tailor, Carella spoiling for a fight (and finding one) and an amusing visit to a high-brow clothes shop stood out for me. The ending also provides a terrific and bizarre finale that is hugely twisted and has been oft borrowed since. More good stuff from McBain, but there are better vintages available.

Friday, 14 December 2018

The Ramsay brothers are keen to move up in the world and get the hell out of town. They gather all their hopes in one basket and set up the Scottish Open dog-fighting tournament. In Leo they have the animal to win it. All they need to complete the plan is a fair wind.

Carlo Salvino returns home missing an arm and a leg. He’s keen to win back the affections of his teenage girlfriend and mother of his child. If he can take his revenge on the Ramsays, so much the better.

The Hooks, well they’re just a maladjusted family caught up in the middle of it all.

A tale of justice, injustice and misunderstanding, Smoke draws its inspiration from characters introduced in a short story first published by Crimespree Magazine and later in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime Stories 8.

“Smoke is reminiscent of Allan Guthrie’s Savage Night in the way it cleverly interweaves different strands of the story and its great mixture of colorful characters, absurdest humor and hard-boiled crime.” —Paul D Brazill, author of Last Year’s Man

“The pace of Smoke is first-class and a definition of noir itself. The characters are well-rounded, the dialogue top-drawer, the ending a satisfying conclusion to a cracking tale.” —Ian Ayris, author of the John Sissons thrillers

“This is a truly great piece of writing with characters that will live long in your mind.” —McDroll, author of Feeling It

“Grim, brutal, never pretty but laced with enough black humor and cautious optimism to elevate it above being a bleak and hopeless read.” —Col’s Criminal Library

“Gritty, working-class fiction from a hell of a writer.” —Matt Phillips, author of The Bad Kind of Lucky

Saturday, 8 December 2018

It's a rare sunny day in
Birmingham (the original one in the UK). I'm heading for Cannon Hill Park, a
vast open green space (yes, the city does have green spaces, read on for more
of that) on the borders between Moseley and Edgbaston. Tess is already there,
perched on a bench near the boating lake, swinging her legs and looking
worryingly as though she's plotting a murder. Mine, perhaps, if I don't get
this interview right...

I recognise the bench from
a picture on her Instagram account. It's the same one that a duck pecked Todd's
backside through, mid-way through Gravy Train (US). That book is set in
Birmingham, in a myriad locations including this park, Moseley itself, a
back-street boozer near the Jewellery Quarter, and of course, Birmingham's
sprawl of canals.

Which brings me rather
neatly to my first question. Nervously, I clear my throat.

So, where did the idea for
'Gravy Train' first come from?

You can blame Birmingham's
canals for that! The city has more miles of canal than Venice, and the police
are always fishing odd things out of them. Not just litter and shopping
trolleys but dead bodies, and in a case that made the local papers about four
years ago, an entire bag of money.

This was unusual enough to
make all my crime-writing instincts start squawking. Where had the money come
from? How had it got there? By accident or design? And if the latter, what had
the people who put it there hoped to achieve?

At the time I wrote a very
tongue in cheek flash fiction story inspired by the idea, called rather
inevitably, Money Laundering. It was published on the online website
81Words.net, and also appears in their anthology of collected stories from the
site, which is available on Amazon if wet money floats your boat...

Usually when I write a story
it satisfies the creative urge on that subject. But the idea stayed with me and
I began to plot out just how that money might have made its way into the canal,
and who it might have got involved with along the way. And suddenly, the
outline of Gravy Train was born.

You set both this book,
and its predecessor 'Raise the Blade', in Birmingham. You must know the city
quite well?

I moved down to Brum in the
mid-1980s to work, and ended up living there for over twenty years. As I don't
drive I travelled everywhere either on foot or by bus, so I got to know places
that most people never even notice as they drive past at thirty miles an hour.

Although the city has a
reputation for being nothing but motorways, factories and dull 1960s concrete,
there are actually all sorts of unusual nooks and crannies if you know where to
look. These range from swathes of Victorian and Edwardian suburbs to stately
homes; medieval manor houses and churches to gleaming modern office blocks;
dodgy back alleys to tree-lined boulevards. And of course, those canals!

Although the city council
works hard to preserve the city's heritage, things are always changing and
every time I go back I discover something new, so it's a place that's full of
surprises and well worth getting to know.

What's all this about a
link to Pink Floyd?

Guilty as charged! I'm a huge
fan of the band, their music in general and Roger Waters' brilliant lyrics in
particular. When I was writing Raise the Blade I realised that the lyrics for
their track Brain Damage (from the famous Dark Side of the Moon album) summed
the book up perfectly. I nicked a tiny fraction of the lyrics for that book's title,
as well as hiding other references to the track, and to Floyd in general,
throughout the book.

When I came to writeGravy Trainit seemed like a good idea to carry on the Pink Floyd connection, so
that title is also from a Floyd track - this time Have a Cigar from Wish You
Were Here. Again, the lyrics match the ethos of the book perfectly, and again
I've scattered references to both that, and the equally appropriate Money (Dark
Side of the Moon again), throughout the book. I hope readers have fun spotting
them!

Although I've never managed
to see the band live, I did stay up into the wee small hours to catch their
amazing reunion at Live Eight, and have also seen their official tribute band
Australian Pink Floyd, in Birmingham, several times. And last year I went to
the fabulous Their Mortal Remains exhibition at the V&A museum in
London, which was an adventure in itself - and which I've just realised would
make a brilliant title for a book...

Are your characters based
on real people?

Well, I don't know anyone
called Ballsy McBollockface if that's what you mean!

But no, this time around the
characters aren't really based on anyone I know. In Raise the Blade some of
them (the over-bearing Gillian, for instance) were amalgamations of several people
I'd met, but for Gravy Train I didn't seem to need that extra prompt. The
characters were already there in my head, and spilled out onto the page
ready-formed.

The only exceptions to that
are Justine and Fred. They first turned up in my short story Wheel Man,
published in the Drag Noir anthology by Fox Spirit Books. I loved writing that
story, and when the plot in Gravy Train called for a car thief, it seemed
silly not to turn back to Justine and finish off her story. I hope the readers
agree.

Are there any more Pink
Floyd-inspired, Birmingham-set books in the works?

Funny you should ask! I'm
currently scrabbling around on the 50th rewrite of another crime
caper set around those same canals, and featuring a bizarre getaway on a narrow
boat. It's called Embers of Bridges, which is cheerfully nicked from the
Floyd track High Hopes (The Division Bell) - one of my all-time favourites and
a perfect fit for the melancholy and suppressed anger I'm writing about. I'm
hoping to finish it in the new year, and submit it to All Due Respect after
that. Whether they'll actually like it is another matter!

As well as that, I have a
dark psychological novella called Consumed by Slow Decay which is set in
Birmingham again but inspired by the rather odd case of a body discovered under
the tarmac of a car park in Manchester. And as well as that, I've penned a few
chapters of another book which doesn't even have a proper title yet, but which
features Edgbaston Reservoir and a bloodthirsty murder in the first few
chapters!

All three still need a ton of
work. I just have to tie myself to my desk and find the time to actually finish
some of them...

And that's that. I've
asked my questions, and I'm still here to tell the tale. She hasn't killed me,
or even threatened to write me in as a victim in her next three books. Then
again, I did happen to mention that I quite like Pink Floyd too.

I fold away my notebook,
tuck it into my handbag, and turn to shake her hand. Then I squawk. There's a
sharp jab from something small but very hard, right through the slats of the
seat. I look at Tess but her hands are folded on her lap.
There's a mocking quack.

Sunday, 2 December 2018

I’m not much for organized religion.
I don’t believe in karma and all that. I believe there is a God, but not the
God that is proclaimed from most pulpits. The God I believe in is a hands-off
kind of being who only steps in when all is truly lost for mankind and not for
individuals. He doesn’t help anyone win football games and He doesn’t save
people from famines, pestilence and war. He gives people a guide and if they
choose not to follow that guide, well, there are consequences clearly
delineated. From what I know, God is interested in the individual’s soul and
not their earthly bodies.All that said, I just witnessed a
Thanksgiving miracle.

I received an email from a woman who
said she had discovered she was my daughter from a DNA test she’d submitted to
Ancestry.com.

It was a communication I’d expected
for fifty some years

I wrote about it in the memoir that
was just published on the nineteenth of this month, Adrenaline Junkie (US).

A book it turns out she had read
just after discovering I was her birth father.

Here’s the first message she sent
me:

Hi,
I recently did my ancestry DNA and apparently we are closely related. I was
adopted at birth. I have no biological family information, including medical
history. I don't know if you have or are willing to give me any information on
who I am, but if you are I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Signed, Maria

To which I replied:

Nov 21, 2018

Hi Maria,

How old are you and when were you adopted? I have a daughter and was married to
her mother and unfortunately was in a place where I couldn't stop it (prison),
but she put our daughter up for adoption. That would have been in 1967 or 1968.
I've often wondered what happened to that little girl. If it's possible it was
you, I would absolutely love to meet you!

Well, that would match. I was born
in 1967. Wow, a lot to take in, going from no history to this in a matter of
minutes. I would very much like to meet you. Let me know some times that would
be convenient. I was adopted as an infant and given no information. I am so
overjoyed right now.

I replied, sending her
my contact info and the little information I had about her mother. She sent me
the following email:

It should take us about 2 hours, to get there, I
hope that is okay, which would be about 1730 hours. My husband, Joe, is a
finish carpenter, though he can do most any type of general contractor work. My
daughter, Nikole, is a supervisor with Forte Residential and Home Health Care
Services, working with families with disabilities. She is a certified
behavioral technician, having passed her boards for that this year. She
graduated from college in Nebraska in 2013, completing her BA in 3 1/2 years,
while working 3 jobs, (I am a little proud). She recently took the job with
Forte after working for several years with Meridian as a behavioral clinician.
She was very good at her job, however she was given several of the worst cases
of child abuse/neglect in St Joseph County to handle during that time, and
needed a change for her own mental health. I am a Public Service officer,
certified in mental first aid, assisting individuals in crisis, group crisis
intervention, and suicide prevention. Fortunately, I've only had two seriously
suicidal people recently and one who was homicidal/suicidal, and all three
ended well. I also train all new hires. In 2013, I had a several tumors
removed, one of which was over 5 lbs, and apparently was not breathing for a
little while during the surgery. During that same time, I had to be cut open in
the doctor's office to relive some bleeding that was pooling and apparently
could kill me. The doctor had to cut me open in her office, without benefit or
anesthesia, or even Listerine, (I asked), I didn't yell at all, not wanting to
scare the other patients, but my poor husband passed out. Apparently, I was
squeezing his hands too hard. He is a very wonderful man. We spent a lot of
2011-2013 in and out of hospitals, (everything is good now), and it was very
hard on him, so he goes a little overboard on the protective side sometimes,
but I figure he earned it. He is very excited to meet you. The tumors and
cancer were what started my quest in earnest, as I had no medical history. We
had my daughter checked and she was at risk for some of the same things I had,
which we dealt with immediately, so she won't have to go through the years of
pain, but I wanted to try to find out everything I could to help ensure her
health. I didn't dare hope I would actually find a close family member, let
alone birth father. I had applied for my birth certificate, as soon as it
became possible on July 15, but still have not received it. I had no
information to go on, it was a closed adoption, didn't list even a city of
birth, my birth certificate was actually issued April of 1968, my birthday
being Oct 8, 1967. My dad offered to help, but I wouldn't have put him in that
position, he always worked so hard to protect me, I wouldn't knowingly create
another issue for him. Finally knowing that I have family and that family
wanted me and wants to meet me, is wonderful to hear and over whelming. I am
very excited to meet you and hope that I do not disappoint. I am overjoyed to
hear I have more siblings, too!!

See you Monday!Maria

Some more tidbits…

Maria, I was "downstate" when you were
born, but I'm pretty sure it was in Memorial. When Sherry put you up for
adoption (against my will), she'd given you a name but didn't tell me. But you
had a legitimate birth and a legitimate mother and father. That was very
important to me and why I insisted she marry me, so that you wouldn't be
illegitimate. I don't understand why none of this info was made available to
you. You weren't some illegitimate baby at all. I wish I could tell you more
about Sherry but I was only with her for a few months. She was a very small
blonde and worked in the office of an insurance company and I don't recall the
name, alas.

Blue skies,Les

I was so overjoyed to read in your book that you
wanted me and that you tried everything to keep me. That it was in there,
without your ever knowing if I would read it, means that it was how you really
felt and that means more than if I had been told that my birth parents named me
this or did this or that.

Maria

Well, we met in person when Maria
and her husband Joe came down and spent Monday evening with us. I can’t begin
to describe the feelings I experienced during that time. Maria looks like me
(poor girl!) and it turns out we share a lot of genetic traits. She’s already
corresponding with her new sisters, Britney and Sienna, and they’ve all made
plans to meet and are all excited to have a new sister(s). Mike is also anxious
to meet his new sister.

She’s just an
amazing person and I’m so blessed to have been able to meet her and begin a
relationship with her. The timing of this is just incredible. Adrenaline Junkie had just come out a
day before she found out I was her father and I’d written about her in it and
it meant the world to her to find out she was truly wanted. She told me she’d
always had a feeling of being unwanted all her life and it meant so much to her
to find out her birth father had really wanted her.

So that’s it. I
have a new daughter and my life has been immeasurably enlarged and blessed. As
happens so often, true life is much more interesting than fiction! If I never
make a dollar from my memoir, I’ve already earned a treasure from its
existence.

Blue skies,

Les

P.S. If you’re
interested, a full account of Maria’s birth situation is in my memoir.

Friday, 23 November 2018

I’m, waiting to interview Lisa de Nikolits, author of Rotten Peaches. I’m unavoidably early
(I’m always early) and I’m annoyed the author isn’t here although she does have
twenty minutes grace. Oh look, there she is, she almost collided with a couple,
one of those awkward door-tangling episodes. Lisa looks perplexed as if Starbucks
is an alien world, confusing and inhospitable and she’s gazing around, peering nearsightedly
at her phone. I stand up, making lifeguard signalling motions and I finally catch
her eye. I have her books piled up on the table and she waves back at me,
smacking a hefty man on the shoulder. She apologizes and heads towards me,
threading dangerously through the tables and nearly knocks a venti something or
other into a teenager’s lap and the teenager scowls.

Lisa apologises for being late, I assure her she wasn’t, and
we chat about who’d like to eat and drink what and Lisa goes off to procure a venti
Pike for me and a pumpkin scone, and a grande non-fat, no-foam latte for
herself, with a Marshmallow Dream Bar on the side. I wanted to do the purchasing
but Lisa’s order was far too complicated and I let her do the honours. I watch
her. She’s shorter than I expected her to be and she looks older, tired. She’s
quite chatty to the barista and I tap my pen impatiently against my notepad.

When she returns, we get settled and I launch right into it.

What’s your worst nightmare?

The one where you are submerged under water and you can’t
breathe and you can’t make your way to the top. You can see the light shining
down through the water and it’s like you’re lying on your back on the bottom of
a murky pond, you’re Ophelia, sunken and there’s no escape.

I meant your worst nightmare in real life, the worst situation you have
been in or could imagine being in.

Real life is so boring! I far prefer to think in imaginative
terms.

Real life is boring? Isn’t that what inspires you?

No. My imaginary life inspires me. Reality is a killer. Hour
upon hour of mind-numbing tedium… that’s real life for you.

And yet you come across as someone endlessly fascinated by the people
and minutiae around you! I’ve read all your interviews.

I am fascinated by life, you’re right. But only as a base
ingredient for what my mind can do with the thing. In and of itself, what I observe
around me is merely a starting point.

And what is the catalyst for turning a dull base chemical, as it were,
into a magic potion for a story?

[Laughs] Honestly, I have no idea. I guess it comes to down
to having a good imagination, a touch of psychosis and an almost pathological
commitment to being a writer.

With the emphasis on psychosis, I’d like to discuss Rotten Peaches with particular attention to the two
secondary characters, the two love interests. JayRay, the conman, and Dirk, the
Afrikaner who wants the old South Africa back and who will do anything to try
to make that happen. How did you come up with them?

I always loved Frank Chambers, the conman love-interest in The Postman Always Rings Twice (James M.
Cain), and I wanted to write my own spin on that kind of guy. I had a lot of
fun with JayRay, he’s one of my favourite characters! He’s so sleazy and so gorgeous!

Dirk was inspired by an ex-boyfriend, an Afrikaans man with
strange moral boundaries that were dictated to him by his Church and People –
the Afrikaans morality. I wondered what happened to him in the new South Africa
and that became an interesting line to follow.

Both of those characters opened up fascinating plot lines
for me and writing the dialogue was a blast! As a writer, it’s the greatest
gift, when characters present themselves, fully formed, script in hand and a
bunch of warped ideas! It creates so much opportunity.

Rotten Peaches is primarily about love, lust, greed and
obsession. But there is racism too. Can you talk a bit about that?

I was born in the era of apartheid and I grew up in it.
Voting for Nelson Mandela was one of the most beautiful moments in my life. It
was a time of wonderful optimism and hope, it was truly amazing. I always
wanted to write about the apartheid experience, as a way to acknowledge the
terrible wrongs that existed when I grew up.

We had a housekeeper, although in those days we simply
called her the ‘maid’ even although she was a woman in her thirties with her
own children. I never even knew what her surname was. Betty. And I wanted to
apologise to Betty by writing about her. It doesn’t make things right, of
course it doesn’t, and Betty, my real Betty, will most probably never know
about the book, but sometimes you write about things that have worried you in
your life, things you can only put right in fiction.

You have described
your writing as Little House on The
Prairie meets Pulp Fiction. That’s
quite the combination, can you explain this?

[Laughs] Yes, well there is a farm scene in Rotten Peaches which starts off feeling
all peaceful and lovely and then it’s like Quentin Tarantino arrives and it
gets quite nasty! I like to take ordinary lives and ordinary people and then
use the worst ‘what if’ that I can imagine. But my ‘what if’ definitely has a
noir spin to it, noir with some humour.

Yes, let’s talk about your humour in writing. Is that an intentional
writing device to ease plot tension and bring depth the characters or why do
you use it?

I don’t use it, it uses me! I don’t have as much control
over my writing as I’d like – honestly, it pops out and I’m like a bystander,
mouth open, going okayyyyy…. But that’s what makes it hugely entertaining. I’m
not funny by nature, I hate watching comedy, it really stresses me out.

What kind of person doesn’t enjoy comedy? You have to explain more!

I just don’t! Half the time I just don’t get the joke! But
that said, I can watch Ace Ventura, Pet
Detective on repeat and I never stop laughing. Or Dumb and Dumber. Cracks me up! I don’t write that kind humour of
course, mine is more satirical, wry. I think I have a rather cynical view of
life and that comes out in humour. But it’s as if it was written by someone
else – like when I read JayRay’s comments, I wonder where they came from!

Do you have a writing routine?

I just do as much as I can in a day before I fall over. I
have a day job, I’m a graphic designer/magazine art director, although these
days magazines are as rare as hens’ teeth, so mainly I do graphic design. Which
is actually a lot easier than writing! Writing is a very tough gig! So I do as
much as I can at night and on the weekends. I have a running to-do list when it
comes to my writing and it’s very long! My motto is this: Do One Thing A Day For Your Writing and I stick to it. One sentence
or 10 000 words, it doesn’t matter, just do one thing.

Tell us about a few things on the to-do list.

I’m doing a lot of readings for Rotten Peaches which I always enjoy. Going to festivals, reading
from the book and being on panels is always such a treat after all the hard,
solitary slog of getting the book out there!

I’m also working on a short story, Hit Me With Your Pet Shark, for the anthology In The Key Of Thirteen, which will be published by The Mesdames of
Mayhem in 2019. I’m a member of the Mesdames, we’re a collective of
crime-loving ladies (and two gentlemen!) and it’s a great group of superbly
talented people.

The Occult Persuasion
and the Anarchist’s Solution will be coming out in 2019 and I need to do a
lot of self-editing on that! I am working on another noir novel, The Weegee Doll, and I have the fledging
idea for a time-travel crime novel called The
Rage Room, although I do seem a little stuck on that one which is
frustrating! There might be nothing there! I’m also looking forward to going to
Milan in April of next year to launch Una
furia dell’altro mondo (The Fury From
The Other World), the Italian publication of No Fury Like That. So there is lots to look forward to, lots to
keep me out of mischief! Although being mischievous is so much more fun than
not!

Anything you’d like to add, in closing?

Readers, keep reading and writers, keep writing! Books (and
fat-bottomed girls!) make the rockin’ world go round and let’s keep it that
wayFor more information, check out Innana Publications ('essential reading for feminists the world over').

It opens with a burst of excitement. Harry, Becky and Leon
are leaving their home town with a bag of money and their hearts pounding like
crazy. They’re not safe. They’re on the run. South London is all they really
know. It’s a catchy start and an edgy one.

From this point on, we’re draw back to the beginning of this
tale – their journey from a late night meeting at a drug deal through to the
danger of what lies ahead.

Having established our main characters, the novel takes
regular tangents to fragment into vignettes of the bricks that built the
houses. There are back stories galore as we get to understand the lives of each
family member in some depth. Each of these pieces is well told and has enough
intrigue to pull a reader in. Though the key narrative gets lost through this
process, the book never loses its energy and drive. Lives overlap. We get to understand
that every person has a tale to tell. That the histories that are hidden well
beneath the surface are tough, exciting and incredible.

Each individual story forms a circle. When these circles
come together, they fill the canvas like a pointillist painting.

The simile there may be terrible, but it draws me to a key
element of the writing. The description here is stunning. Whether it’s the urban
landscape or the body that’s on view, the pictures are painted in such a way
that they burst from the page. It’s really quite something. It’s also something
that can get in the way of the plot on occasion and could maybe become stronger
with a touch of dilution.

I really enjoyed Bricks
a lot. I’d often stop reading and immediately want to pick the book up again,
which is always a good sign. That’s not to say it was perfect. In fact, there
are lots of flaws that are difficult to overlook.

The exploration of each character’s back story may be
well-handled, but the novel begins to feel the weight of all those tales by the
end. Momentum slows a good deal before sparking back into life at the
conclusion.

There’s also an issue with the range of character responses.
Too many of them experience the world in the similar ways. Their biologies are
almost identical. Their reactions could be interchangeable. Which, of course, may
be the point, who knows?

As the strands of the work came together and come close to
getting back to where things began, the energy fizzes and sparks. It’s a change
of pace that is welcome, but is also slightly incongruous. In many ways, if the
individual elements were surgically removed and reworked, there could be two
novels here, a well-paced crime drama and a literary gem.

All of those issues may have fallen to the back of my mind
had it not been for the ending. The ‘what happened next?’ element arrives and
drags down the energy so that it disappears even more quickly than it came. It
was something of a let-down and I’d rather have had the ultimate conclusion
left to my imagination.

Which all seems rather damning.

It shouldn’t. In spite of the things I feel were wrong, I
still found the read compelling and would recommend it without much
reservation. There are so many things to like and so many touches that need to
be experienced that I hope you’ll give it a try.

Sunday, 28 October 2018

Everybody loves Frankie Machianno, aka Frankie theMachine, aka Frankie the Bait Guy. The fishermen, the Little League kids, the students from the drama club, the soccer kids, the surfers, ex cops, his ex wife, his lover, his daughter, the basketball players and the local Vietnamese community.And I love Frankie, too.Frankie's past is more colourful than most. He has been a hitman, amongst other things, for the mob and has earned the reputation for being the toughest and the best that is well-deserved. Not that you'd know it from the opening chapters. For the first forty pages, we just get to know the guy. There are tasty hints of what might lie ahead, but in the main we find out about is his daily routine and about the things he cares for the most in life. It's a crucial section of the novel as it lays down the foundations of the man and gives us all the material we need to want to root for him all the way to the end. What is so impressive here is the way that this introduction is never dull. There may not be anything explosive to latch on to, but the smoulder is a pleasure.I'd have been happy to carry on in the same vein for a lot longer, wondering how he was going to pay for his daughter to go to medical school and maintain order on the pier, but that wasn't to be. Instead, in chapter seven, Frankie returns home to find an unfamiliar car in his alley. He's been waiting for such a visit for many years and is prepared to deal with whatever appears before him.What he finds is Mouse Junior, son of the boss of the local family, who asks for Frankie's help. Vince Vena, new member of the ruling council of the Combination, wants a heavy slice of Mouse Jr's porn pie and Mouse Jr needs someone to help him out. Frankie is obliged to offer his support no matter how much he dislikes the idea. He agrees to go to a meet, but only on the condition that he's there to help with the negotiations. He knows how things work and comes up with a plan that should please all sides.Unfortunately for Frankie, this is no ordinary meeting. He's been set up with bait as good as the stuff he usually sells, while Vena awaits him offshore ready to gut him and send him off to sleep with the fishes.But this is Frankie the Machine we're talking about. It would take a hell of a surprise to bring him down. Needless to say, he gets himself out of the problem. In doing so, he opens himself up as a target for the mob and goes into hiding. What he needs to find out, and quickly, is who ordered the hit, who sanctioned it and why. If he can do that, he can either clear up any misunderstanding or wipe out the problem in a different way.The remainder of the book works by shifting from flashback to the present. We get to know how Frankie earned his nickname and also to follow his increasingly tense foray into saving his life.Those forty pages at the beginning earn their salt as the story unfolds. Without them, the strength of bond to the protagonist wouldn't be there. It would still be a great read, but the power of the connection elevates it even beyond that.The Winter of Frankie Machine (US) is a class act. It brings in all the warmth, romance and nostalgia of the mafia while also reflecting upon it and pulling it apart as a pile of bullshit. In the end, what seems to be important to all the people who lived through the period of time covered is that everyone had their day. It's only Frankie who seems to understand that it's not enough to live in the past and that it's the present and the future that mean everything. This one's a real winner. A real delight. A guaranteed hit.